I don't think we really thought through the judging plan very carefully; this isn't like an art contest, where you can let people sift through hundreds of entries. The total bulk of the entries came to just under four gigabytes worth of files. If, say, 2000 people wanted to download all thoes files, we're looking at 8 terabytes of bandwidth in the next week. That's a lot.

However, that's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that there are very, very, VERY few people out there with the TIME to judge that many entries. We're talking well over a dozen hours of video and songs. Do YOU have fifteen hours of free time in the next 7 days? Do you want to devote it to looking at entries for a contest you're probably not even entered to win?

I didn't think so.

So we came up with an alternative. A much smaller group (made up of bungie.org/Bungie staff and some hand-picked friends) will do the monster job of sorting through the entries, and pare each category down to 7 contestants. Those seven entries for each group will be posted publicly, and you, the Halo community, will be asked to watch 'em, and pick your favorite. You'll have 3 days for each category. (We're going to put up only one category at a time, to 1) decrease the amount of watching/listening you need to do at any one time, and 2) save our servers.)

At 5:00 am PDT on Wednesday, June 13, the 7 top entries for the Original Song category will go online for judging, and they will remain up until 5:00 am on Saturday, June 16. At that point, you'll be able to vote on the top 7 Montage entries. At 8:00 pm PDT on Tuesday, June 19, we'll switch over to Parody songs. (This extra 15 hours is because of logistical problems on the 19th.) On Friday, June 22, you'll have the chance to vote for Machinima entries. Voting will conclude on Monday morning, June 25, with winners announced later that day.

This is a week later than we said we'd announce winners - I'd like to apologize for this. (It's actually UP TO a week; the current contest page reads "Final winners will be announced the week of June 18, 2007" which could, I guess, be as late as Saturday, June 23.)

There are a lot of valid entries - 65 original songs (more than 3.5 hours of music), 20 parodies (just over an hour), 41 montage vids (a bit over 2.5 hours of footage), and 16 machinima pieces (just under an hour). What's sad, though, is that there are as many invalid entries - 103 of them. Videos not encoded at 320x240, videos bigger than 40 mb, videos longer than 5 minutes, videos including already-released footage, 'original' songs including clips from existing songs, the list goes on. It's frustrating to think that folks put so much time into creating something for this contest - but couldn't be bothered to read the rules. (Or read them, but didn't actually PROCESS them.)

It was frustrating that between the hours of 3 am and 4 am last night (midnight and 1 am PDT), I received no fewer than a dozen emails from people who had missed the deadline, and wanted an extension. We can't really make exceptions, because where do you draw the line? 5 minutes late? 15 minutes? 1 hour? 1 day? We DREW a line. That line was at 12:01 am PDT. Sorry.

Anyway - the judges will be getting a long and detailed email later this afternoon, which will include download locations, guidelines, and advice. Over the next 3 days, they'll pore over the 65 original song entries, and pick out the top 7 pieces - and those will be presented to you folks on Wednesday morning. And then, every three days, you'll get ANOTHER batch of files. Here's hoping people don't run out of steam!